Many older houses only have one bathroom which is OK until your kids become teens and then you can never get into it. There is a constant queue every morning as everyone is trying to get ready for school and work.
And of course if the teens are female then they need extra time in the bathroom much to the annoyance of everyone else. It is much worse if the toilet is in the bathroom too as then the questions are really long. You know that you need another bathroom but how and where and how much will it cost.
It is true that the bathroom can be the most costly room in the house as plumbing fittings are very expensive and the guy who will come and plumb for you will charge you a fortune. We haven’t even started the building part yet but there are ways we can keep costs down by some simple planning.
An option is to add an en suite to the main bedroom so we have our very own bathroom and loo and then the kids can fight over the other one all they like. That would be nice, our own bathroom off our bedroom. Handy if we want to go to the loo in the middle of the night too.
Don’t need to worry about robes and slippers, just toddle in in our night attire, if we wear any. It is nice too if we enjoy a shower before bed to just wander straight from the shower to our bed and the lady of the house will appreciate the comfort and privacy for make up chores.
So select the wall where you can fit your en suite. If you have a wide eve outside you are in luck because you can use an en suite quite comfortably if it is only 1 meter wide. You can add this much to one bedroom wall and if it fits under the eve so much the better.
One end will be a shower and the other the toilet with a narrow handbasin in the centre opposite the entrance doorway. No need to even have a door here if you don’t want although most like a bit of privacy on the loo.
Your shower need only be an inexpensive shower base with a shower curtain and the loo is fairly basic. You can pick up all these items at auctions if you want to go that way and save a lot on new price.
To save some cash with your plumber you can dig the trench work yourself and back fill when he is done. He won’t be impressed if you do much more because most plumbing jobs are governed by local authority.
You need to check with them too before you start and they may need a plan of your proposed new en suite and an application to build. All in all, this is probably the cheapest option for you to relieve the bathroom congestion at your house every morning.